Earth Law Center Blog
Earth Law Clubs at American Universities: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
Student activism captures media attention, prompting the public to respond to causes. It can shift the paradigm on climate change and policies that are detrimental to the environment.
University of Michigan: Teach-In + 50
By Melannie Levine
How do you start a movement?
According to entrepreneur Derek Sivers, a movement requires the power of two people. One person dancing is a “lone nut” but with two there is a leader and a follower. When a third person joins in on the growing action, the dancing becomes a crowd. As Sivers says, “a crowd is news.”
If the second person never rises to the occasion, then that lone nut does not become a leader starting a movement [1].
Students and faculty in the 1960s and 1970s across the United States rose to protest numerous lack of rights. Activists campaigned for civil rights, free speech and the rights of women, gay people and African Americans. Student activism also critiqued the United States’ involvement in South African apartheid and the Vietnam War. These movements captured media attention, prompting the public to respond to the causes to which they related.
More recently student activists have been campaigning on issues such as student debt, climate change, gender and racial equality, and sitting political leaders.
Below are a few examples of successful and influential student-led movements in the United States over the last several decades. By thinking about what made these movements successful, we can develop ideas for building the Earth Law movement on campuses across America.
“Question Authority!”
At San Francisco State University (SFSU) students realized that their actions could influence political decisions in the university and the city. However, it was in 1963 that SFSU students could speak openly about current politics on American university campuses - a first for the country.
This advancement in freedom of speech on campus created a place to react to the issues of the following years. Topics enabled for student-led groups, including the Black Students Union and the Third World Liberation Front, to come together for a common cause. The pinnacle of the groups’ collaboration occurred with the suspension of George Murray, a Black Students Union member and Black Panther. Student concern about racial bias and exclusion boiled over with SFSU’s decision, experiencing it as a truly racist action representative of the times [2].
On November 6, 1968, a five-month strike began on the SFSU campus. Seeing that the classroom did not reflect the current political situation, students demanded a change in the curriculum and an increase in the student diversity. Black students didn’t learn about their history or current struggles. Other students did not see their education encompass their own individual ethnicities. Some of the faculty joined the strike as they believed that the concerns raised by the students were valid. They also added their own issues such as renegotiating labor requirements and increasing wages [3].
Both the Black Students Union and the Third World Liberation Front submitted lists of demands to the school’s administration. The students asked the school to pay full-time wages to all full-time professors regardless of skin color; to institute a Bachelor’s Degree in Black Studies; to create a School of Ethnic Studies degree; and to expand the number of non-white students attending the university to full capacity.
On March 20, 1969, the student-led groups and college administration reached an agreement. Not all of the demands were met, but the strikers were appeased by the schools’ proposed resolutions and ceased their protest [2].
This strike set in motion protests both on many other college campuses (University of California Berkeley, for example) and in public spaces. Campaigners highlighted the mistreatment of African Americans and minorities, the country’s actions in the Vietnam War, and other related issues of institutionalized racism.
An Educational Protest
On March 24, 1965 the first “teach-in” took place at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbour Campus – marking the “first large-scale student movement” in the US. The teach-in, coordinated by the student-led group called Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), protested against the Vietnam War. Formed just five years earlier, SDS enjoyed high name, mission and manifesto recognition within two years of its establishment. The group valued “participatory democracy as a political process that would realize civil rights and egalitarianism” [4].
Organized as an all-night affair so as to not disturb the school day, the protesters taught “injustice in political policy” instead of a traditional protest, which might have led to the firing of the involved faculty. This positive protest actually received the university’s approval. Three thousand people attended the “lectures, debates, film viewings, musical performances and workshops, with a large rally to finish off the event the following morning” [4].
Had this teach-in occurred only at the University of Michigan, the coordinators and participants would have been the lone nuts or outliers. Instead, they became leaders that started a movement. On the following day, Columbia University held a similar event. Within a week, 35 schools followed suit, growing to 120 American colleges hosting equivalent teach-ins by the end of the school year, becoming a nationwide phenomenon.
The Power of Cutting Ties
In the late 1990s the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees (UNITE) started to actively encourage college students to intern with them. The Union aimed to garner the enthusiasm, energy, and power of university students, as seen in previous decades, and apply it to improving conditions in the sweatshops that made their schools’ clothing. They figured that if students fought the sweatshop conditions, change would happen faster on both campuses and among the general public [5].
Tico Almedia, the first student to start campaigning against sweatshops, studied at Duke University had been one of UNITE’s summer interns in 1997. Almeida returned to school in the fall to form the student group called Students Against Sweatshops (SAS). SAS asked the university to require companies making school clothing or products to follow a newly created set of standards which created safer and better paid working conditions for sweatshop workers.
With an intensive email campaign and sit-in at the president’s office, SAS members established the forum for a code of conduct to be written and followed by the school’s administration. The new policy included improved wages, benefits, and work-environment conditions, the ability to form a union without repercussion, and the university having the right to check company compliance. Any company found to be violating these terms would have their contract with the school cancelled if they did not comply immediately [6].
Within a year of implementing this code of conduct at Duke University and then Georgetown University, SAS grew so much that it had representatives on over 300 campuses and parent organization, United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), established [7].
Students employed various tactics including marches, petitions, showcasing exhibits, teach-ins, sit-ins, speeches, rallies, debates, and onslaughts of email and paper communication to the students, faculty, and administration [5]. The general public also started discussions about sweatshops, which added to the momentum of the cause [8].
Years later, the power of these codes of conducts continued when companies such as Nike and Russell violated the policies, jeopardizing their relationship with the universities [9, 10]. By having the policies in place students have ensured that their schools follow through with the agreement. Students have protested and gone on strike if need be to maintain the morals that they want on their school campuses.
Going Forward: Earth Law Clubs
Students today seem to realize more deeply the critical juncture faced by humanity as the climate continues to warm, species disappear and oceans fill with plastic. The time is ripe for another student-led movement; this time, though, focused on climate change and advocating for the environment’s rights.
The lessons of previous student movements give us the opportunity to build Earth Law activism on a tried and true working system. When we establish Earth Law Clubs on school campuses across the United States, we will be joining a healthy tradition of American student activism.
The lessons of previous student movements:
Lesson #1: Student-led movements work.
Lesson #2: Positive forms of protest (teach-ins, mass communication, exhibits, and so on) gain university’s administration and general public support more effectively than violent demonstrations.
Lesson #3: Student-led movements do not need to originate from students or college campuses but can exponentially expand once students take up the cause.
Lesson #4: Student-led movements take months, if not years, to achieve their desired goals.
Lesson #5: Powerful movements involve many schools, corralling the collective interest and pressure of thousands of students.
Earth Law Club intends to help create a platform where environmental justice and Rights of Nature discussions can occur. We want to include student voices to shift the paradigm of environmental protection from one where humans see nature as a resource to one in which humans see nature as equal partners.
Alicia Follord and Melissa Zajicek recently formed Vermont Law School’s first Earth Law Club. Outreach continues to indigenous groups, law schools, universities, colleagues and local nonprofit organizations to connect student groups already focused on the environment or start their own Earth Law Club.
Working together with other similarly-focused groups, as the Black Students Union and the Third World Liberation Front did at SFSU, will create the momentum to turn individual group aims into a collective movement.
Earth Law Center invites students to intern over the summer and get involved with specific legal initiatives aimed at creating new laws recognizing the Rights of Nature. Earth Law Clubs provide the opportunity for student-led action and participation, whether starting up a new legal initiative or petitioning local governing bodies to incorporate Earth Law for protection of nature.
Interested in volunteering? Email Melannie Levine at mlevine@earthlaw.org. Otherwise, find more information on Earth Law Center’s website.
Join the movement for Earth Law and give Mother Nature a voice!
References
[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement
[4] http://schugurensky.faculty.asu.edu/moments/1965teachin.html
[6] https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/duke-students-campaign-against-sweatshops-1997-1999
[7] http://usas.org/about/mission-vision-organizing/
[8] http://michiganintheworld.history.lsa.umich.edu/antisweatshop/exhibits/show/exhibit/origins/usas
If Corporations Have Rights, Shouldn’t Nature Too?
Despite increased efforts to protect the environment, the destruction continues. To restore balance, nature needs legal rights too. In some places it is already happening.
Image: public-domain-image.com
By Alyssa Wethington and Helen Louis George
If Earth’s 4.6 billion years were scaled down to 46, humanity would be 4 hours old. In the one minute since the industrial revolution we’ve lost 50 percent of the world’s forests, [1] endangered 75 percent of coral reefs, and overfished 90 percent of fish stocks.[2] Clearly something is out of whack.
Despite increased efforts to protect the environment, the destruction continues. To restore balance, nature needs legal rights too. In some places it is already happening.
In America, the passing of the Biodiversity and Rights of Nature Ordinance in Santa Monica[3] means that local community residents and other stakeholders can directly sue to protect the municipality’s natural environment. Elsewhere in the world, courts have recognized legal rights for four major rivers; the Whanganui in New Zealand, the Ganges and Yamuna in India, and the Atrato in Colombia. Going forward, anyone who damages these entities (which now hold their own legal rights) will be treated in law as if they have injured a person.
What are rights for nature?
Rights of nature is a movement committed to securing legal rights for nature. It shares a perspective with the many indigenous cultures that believe all living things are interconnected. We are not separate to nature, we are part of it, connected to every living thing. Rights of nature seeks to expand justice until all life on Earth is protected by the law.
As with human rights, rights of nature holds that nature has intrinsic rights to exist, to thrive, and to evolve. Unlike the current environmental laws, rights of nature does not see nature as the property of humans or as existing only to satisfy human wants. Nature does not exist simply to be a resource for us, but has its own rhythms and needs. In a rights of nature legal system, we — the people — have the legal authority and responsibility to enforce these rights on behalf of ecosystems.[4]
What are rights for corporations?
Rights for non-humans exist already. Around the world, corporations maintain many of the rights assigned to individual people. In its most general sense, corporation refers to a group of people acting as a single entity for a designated purpose. It’s likely the Catholic Church was one of the first corporations[5]. Acting as a single entity to ensure resources remained in the Church rather than with individuals was crucial to its survival. The word corporation applies to everything from nonprofits to startups to giant multinationals.
Of course, we know a corporation is not really a person in the same way as a human. Corporations don’t take walks in the park or settle in with popcorn on movie night. They also don’t go to jail when they do something criminal. Yet in the eyes of the law, corporations enjoy many of the same rights and protections afforded to individuals — including free speech and religious expression. In the U.S. in particular, this useful legal fiction of a corporation as a single legal person, has continually expanded. Over the past 200 years, and particularly in the last five, the Supreme Court has repeatedly found that not only are corporations people, but also that being people gives them the same constitutional rights as other Americans.[6]
A 2013 report from the Congressional Research Service details the constitutional protections afforded to corporations:
“Corporations have no Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. On the other hand, the courts have recognized or have assumed that corporations have a First Amendment right to free speech; a Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures; a Fifth Amendment right to due process and protection against double jeopardy; Sixth Amendment rights to counsel, jury trial, speedy trial, and to confront accusers, and to subpoena witnesses; and Eighth Amendment protection against excessive fines.”[7]
How are rights for nature and rights for corporations connected?
Let’s start by establishing that corporate activity requires natural resources: fuel for transport, raw materials for manufacture, energy to keep the lights on, at the minimum. Of course some industries use nature more intensively than others; just 100 fossil fuel using companies produce 71 percent of the world’s carbon emissions.[8] In any case, in all these scenarios one party has rights (the corporation) while the other party does not (nature). As a result, one party consistently gets what it wants, while the other party suffers without possibility of defense or compensation.
So if corporations enjoy the rights, privileges, and protections granted to individuals under the Constitution, shouldn’t nature get the same rights too?
Experts argue that the 6th Mass Extinction has begun with animal species disappearing at an accelerating rate due to a combination of habitat destruction, climate change, and pollution. Experts also predict that virtually all fish stocks will be commercially depleted by 2048. Population growth and global agriculture cause some scientists to predict serious water shortages well before 2048. Although many remain optimistic that technology will save the day, humans haven’t figured out how to replenish many of the world’s depleted resources. Once fish go extinct, they’re gone forever.
Why the focus on corporations, you might ask. An environmental impact report from the United Nations analyzed the activities of the 3,000 biggest public companies in the world and found the estimated combined [environmental] damage was worth US$2.2 trillion every year.[9] More than 60 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the size, power, or influence of major corporations and the federal government.[10] Worse still, these environmental damages cost the global economy an estimated US$4.7 trillion per year in health and social costs, lost ecosystem services, and pollution.[11]
How do we give nature a seat at the table?
To have a real chance at reversing the damage that’s been done nature needs rights too, alongside corporations. A balance of rights creates an opportunity for sustainable relationships. When a conflict arises between corporate interests and nature’s interests, the legal system can step in because both parties have legal rights. The courts can help resolve these conflicts since rights conflicts happen all the time.
Recognizing the intrinsic rights of nature will also help counter the trend of corporations suing governments for protecting people and nature. One example of this is Bayer Syngenta suing the European Union for its proposed ban on three neonicotinoid pesticides linked to the deaths of millions of bees.
Nature’s rights benefit human rights. Where the environment is harmed, people suffer from disease, violence, and land loss. ELC has published two reports highlighting the deep connection between nature’s rights violations and human rights violations.[12]
What’s the evidence for there being a rights of nature movement?
The rights of nature movement saw its first big win in 2008, when Ecuador revised its constitution to include rights of nature, stating that nature, “has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.”[13] The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) worked with Ecuador to establish those rights of nature laws, and has been fighting since 1995 to help municipalities and townships achieve self-governance that includes rights of nature.[14]
Over 40 municipalities have partnered with CELDF to pass rights of nature laws. These include Grant Township in Pennsylvania. Their charter reinstates a ban on injection wells, contradicting a recent ruling from a federal judge that had overturned portions of earlier legislation. The people of Grant Township spoke loud and clear: they have rights, they will protect those rights, and nobody — not a corporation, not the state government, and not a federal judge — has the authority to tell them to accept toxic frack waste in their community.[15]
CELDF works on rights of nature initiatives in India, Nepal, Australia, Cameroon, Colombia and the United States.
In 2011, Bolivia amended its Constitution to include rights of nature, followed by Mexico City in 2017. For a complete list of global initiatives around rights of nature, see the United Nations Harmony with Nature initiative’s updates from around the world: http://www.harmonywithnatureun.org/rightsofnature.html.
Earth Law Center has launched multiple initiatives to secure legal rights for rivers in Mexico, the Great Lakes, the Patagonian Sea, the Whale and Dolphin Sanctuary in Uruguay, as well as in the municipality of San Francisco.
The Global Alliance for Rights of Nature hosts a Rights of Nature Tribunal in Bonn, Germany, in November 2017 to investigate cases of environmental destruction and violation of the rights of nature.
Nature's Rights in the UK has launched a European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) — a democratic mechanism open to citizens of the EU — to propose to add the rights of nature to the EU legislative agenda.[16]
In the Peruvian and Ecuadorian Amazon the Pachamama Alliance is working with indigenous tribes to permanently protect the Sacred Headwaters region. When this is achieved nearly 50 million acres of rainforest will be under indigenous management. The management will oversee the key social, economic, and political aspects of the area and place a complete ban on all industrial extractive activities.[17]
Show your support for nature
According to the World Economic Forum, climate change ranks within the top ten biggest global challenges.[18] Tackling climate change may seem daunting, but consider how much people have already changed the world. The abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, civil rights, and LGBT+ rights all come from people calling for change.
You have an opportunity to join the Earth Law movement:
- share Earth Law news with your friends
- join your local rights of nature groups
- email info@earthlaw.org to learn about volunteering with Earth Law Center.
Write to your government representatives.
Here is a suggested message that you might like to send your government representatives.
Dear ______________
The law community has found a pragmatic solution to the environmental crisis. I would like you to learn about this great idea and support it today.
Earth Law will help ensure a future for your voters’ grandchildren by giving nature the same rights as people and corporations. You may have heard Earth Law described as “rights of nature.” In an Earth Law system of jurisprudence, nature will have a voice in the law courts.
- There is no time to lose. Scientists predict that a quarter of mammals and 40 percent of amphibians may go extinct in the foreseeable future. This extinction rate is a thousand times the average across history.
- The World Bank recently studied the potential impacts of a 4 degree centigrade increase (an increasingly likely scenario). It found it would create a “transition of the Earth’s ecosystems into a state unknown inhuman experience.” The World Bank also warns of “unprecedented heat waves, severe drought, and major floods.
What can you do in government to stabilize this unstable situation? You can tell your colleagues about Earth Law. By doing so, you will promote stability.
Earth Law is a practical solution that will protect communities by creating balance between corporations and nature. It will strengthen the economy by legislating for sustainability. It will safeguard the environment we all depend on.
Earth Law is not a new idea. It is a reality in parts of the United States and elsewhere.
The idea has been tried and tested by more than thirty US municipalities and Mexico City. All have included references to rights of nature in their laws. Earth Law is already enshrined in the national constitutions of Ecuador and Bolivia.
You may have heard about Santa Monica, California. It recently adopted a Sustainability Rights Ordinance; in part to protect its Sustainable City Plan from destructive economic interference. The ordinance states that, “natural communities and ecosystems possess fundamental and inalienable rights to exist and flourish,” and provides citizens with enforcement authority to protect these rights.
- Thanks to Earth Law, the people of Santa Monica possess rights to clear air; a sustainable food system that provides healthy, locally grown food; clean water from sustainable sources; marine waters safe for recreation; and a sustainable energy future based on renewable energy sources.
- Santa Monica’s new law also states that “corporate entities … do not enjoy special privileges or powers under the law that subordinate the community’s rights to their private interests.”
Together we face an uncertain future but there is hope. Earth Law is a positive, forward thinking, and clear headed response to a crisis situation. Please learn more about it and do what you can to support it in government.
With thanks,
[1] http://greenpeaceusa.tumblr.com/post/93508666790/the-earth-is-46-billion-years-old-scaling-to-46
[2] https://www.ecowatch.com/one-third-of-commercial-fish-stocks-fished-at-unsustainable-levels-1910593830.html
[3] https://www.earthlawcenter.org/land-ordinances/
[4] http://therightsofnature.org/what-is-rights-of-nature/
[5] http://www.npr.org/2014/07/28/335288388/when-did-companies-become-people-excavating-the-legal-evolution
[6] https://consumerist.com/2014/09/12/how-corporations-got-the-same-rights-as-people-but-dont-ever-go-to-jail/
[7] https://consumerist.com/2014/09/12/how-corporations-got-the-same-rights-as-people-but-dont-ever-go-to-jail/
[8] https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change
[9] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/18/worlds-top-firms-environmental-damage
[10] http://www.gallup.com/poll/159875/americans-similarly-dissatisfied-corporations-gov.aspx
[11] http://www.planetexperts.com/companies-pay-environmental-damage/
[12] https://www.earthlawcenter.org/co-violations- of-rights/?rq=Co- Violations
[13] https://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/ecuador-constitution-grants-nature-rights/?mcubz=0
[14] https://celdf.org/community-rights/
[15] http://celdf.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Susquehanna-Fall-2015.pdf
[16] http://www.theecologist.org/essays/2988863/natures_rights_a_new_paradigm_for_environmental_protection.html
[17] https://www.pachamama.org/about/accomplishments
[18] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/what-are-the-10-biggest-global-challenges/
Earth Law Means Rights for All (Including Humans)
"Now, the world at large seems to be rediscovering indigenous wisdom by coming around to the idea that humans are part of a complex whole – not outside and independent of it."
By Darlene Lee
Origins of Earth Law
The oldest hominid (a term scientists apply to humans and their two-legged pre-human predecessors) is 7 million years old.[1] Agriculture appeared only 12,000 years ago[2]. That means in the intervening millions of years, humans moved across the land, living in a way that left the lightest footprint on the environment.
From these gatherer-hunter roots, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) of Indigenous peoples of the world developed. Indigenous people are people defined in international or national legislation as having a set of specific rights based on their historical ties to a particular territory, and their cultural or historical distinctiveness from other populations that are often politically dominant.[3]
TEK acknowledges the intrinsic rights of all living systems to exist, persist, and flourish. This sense of place and concern for individuals leads to two basic TEK concepts: 1) all things are connected and 2) all things are related. Humans are not the center of the universal web, just one strand of many. Indigenous cultures view both themselves and nature as part of an extended ecological family that shares ancestry and origins.[4]
Rediscovery of Earth Law
In contrast, the ability of western scientific and technological advances to manipulate everything within reach (including each other) seems sourced from our ability to divest ourselves from all living systems. A Post-Enlightenment Western scientific worldview uses terms such as “natural resources” to describe everything other than humans and man-made objects. This perspective holds the other as property and therefore something to be used to our advantage. Even words like “protect” and “conserve” imply ownership, apart and separate.
Now, the world at large seems to be rediscovering indigenous wisdom by coming around to the idea that humans are part of a complex whole – not outside and independent of it. This includes an awareness that nature’s connection to humans determines the continued health and well-being of humans. According to the Dalai Lama, “Today we understand that the future of humanity very much depends on our planet, and that the future of the planet very much depends on humanity. But this has not always been so clear to us. Until now, you see, Mother Earth has somehow tolerated sloppy house habits. But now human use, population, and technology have reached that certain stage where Mother Earth no longer accepts our presence with silence. In many ways she is now telling us, ‘My children are behaving badly,’ she is warning us that there are limits to our actions.”[5]
Earth Law (also known as Wild Law or Earth Jurisprudence, from the book by Cormac Cullinan) shares similar perspectives on nature as the Indigenous worldview. Christopher D. Stone’s Should Trees Have Standing first argued for rights of nature in 1972, saying, “I am quite seriously proposing that we give legal rights to forests, oceans, rivers and other so-called ‘natural objects’ in the environment – indeed, to the natural environment as a whole.”[6]
While a singular view of nature does not exist across the myriad indigenous cultures, it’s useful to look for commonalities across a specific group – such as Native American cultures – for a clue about the orientation of indigenous cultures towards nature. Key commonalities include:
· Nature is something we live within and as a part of it. No essential separation, no transcendental dualism, no Enlightenment search for objectivity, no Puritan fear of dangerous, chaotic nature, no distant observation in Romanticism.
· Nature is the location of spirituality, both in individual beings (usually animals) and in a more general sense of the sacred.
· Nature’s spiritual value calls for reverence, respect and humility in our relationship with it.[7]
Earth Law is a philosophy of law and human governance that is based on the idea that humans are only one part of a wider community of beings and that the welfare of each member of that community is dependent on the welfare of the Earth as a whole. It states that human societies will only be viable and flourish if they regulate themselves as part of this wider Earth community and do so in a way that is consistent with the fundamental laws or principles that govern how the universe functions, which is the ‘Great Jurisprudence’.[8]
In If Nature had Rights, a 2008 article in Orion Magazine, author Cormac Cullinan notes, “If we accept [Thomas] Berry’s propositions that the Earth is a communion of subjects, and that rights originate where the universe originates and not from human jurisprudence, it means we cannot claim that humans have human rights without conceding that other members of the Earth Community also have rights. In other words, the rights of the members of the Community are indivisible – there cannot be rights for some without there being rights for all.”[9]
In a 1972 case Sierra Club v. Morton, The Walt Disney Company sought to build a $35 million ski resort in the subalpine glacial valley of Mineral King, in California. The project had received all the permits to go forward, and Walt Disney had personally begun buying private property around Mineral King, when Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund (now called Earthjustice) sued the United States Secretary of the Interior in San Francisco federal court to block development of the ski resort. Although Sierra Club lost the battle, they won the war. The case moved forward after Sierra Club amended its complaint and Governor Regan withdrew his support. Mineral King was ultimately never developed and was subsequently absorbed into Sequoia National Park.
Justice William O. Douglas wrote a now famous dissenting opinion which states in part:
The voice of the inanimate object, therefore, should not be stilled. That does not mean that the judiciary takes over the managerial functions from the federal agency. It merely means that before these priceless bits of Americana (such as a valley, an alpine meadow, a river, or a lake) are forever lost or are so transformed as to be reduced to the eventual rubble of our urban environment, the voice of the existing beneficiaries of these environmental wonders should be heard … That is why these environmental issues should be tendered by the inanimate object itself. Then there will be assurances that all of the forms of life which it represents will stand before the court – the pileated woodpecker as well as the coyote and bear, the lemmings as well as the trout in the streams. Those inarticulate members of the ecological group cannot speak. But those people who have so frequented the place as to know its values and wonders will be able to speak for the entire ecological community.
Earth Law in Practice
On March 14, 2017, the Whanganui in New Zealand became the first river in the world to gain legal rights. The Whanganui Iwi (tribes) have fought for recognition of their relationship to the river since the 1870s, so the decision brings New Zealand’s longest running litigation in history to a close.[10] New Zealand's attorney general Chris Finlayson was quoted in the New York Times as acknowledging the Maori perspective as formative in the granting of rights to these natural entities, saying, “In their worldview, ‘I am the river and the river is me.” He added adding that “Their geographic region is part and parcel of who they are.”[11]
Rule of law is a framework based on rules meant to govern all individuals regardless of their stature or position. Rule of law is defined as the restriction of the arbitrary exercise of power by subordinating it to well-defined and established laws. Since its inception, the law has not just enabled, but helped further social evolution in the way that crampons assist the mountain climber. The law provides guidelines and support. The law also sets a baseline, to ensure that behavior does not fall below that (and when it does, there are consequences). Law can be one of the most useful tools in our drive to stop and reverse environmental destruction.
The Whanganui is by no means alone. In 2008, Ecuador became the first country to include Rights of Nature in its Constitution. In 2010, Bolivia passed its Law of Rights of Mother Earth. The Atrato River in Colombia gained legal rights as a result of a case presented by the Colombian NGO Tierra Digna, Afro-Colombian organizations, and indigenous organizations.[12]
The amendment to the Ecuadorian Constitution was sourced from indigenous cultural perspectives. Traditional indigenous cultures prefer the term Mother Earth in referring to nature and our planet as it connotes the sacred relationship of all life. The reference employed by the Ecuadorian Constitution is "Nature, or Pachamama (Quechua for Mother Earth) where life is reproduced and exists".[13] The Kichwa notion of “Sumak Kawsay” or “buen vivir” in Spanish translates roughly to good living in English. It expresses the idea of harmonious, balanced living among people and nature. The idea centers on living “well” rather than “better” and thus rejects the capitalist logic of increasing accumulation and material improvement. Nature is conceived as part of the social fabric of life, rather than a resource to be exploited or as a tool of production. The Preamble of the Ecuadorian Constitution reads:
“We women and men, the sovereign people of Ecuador recognizing our age-old roots, wrought by women and men from various peoples, Celebrating nature, the Pachamama (Mother Earth), of which we are a part and which is vital to our existence…. Hereby decide to build a new form of public coexistence, in diversity and in harmony with nature, to achieve the good way of living, the sumac kawsay.”[14]
Conclusion
We have the opportunity now to shift the paradigm, from one in which everything and everyone can be considered property to one in which all living systems and beings are equal partners. We can do this by legally recognizing the inherent value and rights of the ecosystem whose support is essential to the survival of all living things on the planet (including us). This paradigm shift puts Earth at the center, with all its myriad parts as subjects within the whole. It recognizes that the biosphere called Earth has an inherent right to exist, thrive and evolve. Securing those rights in a court of law helps substantiate that shift in perspective, and gives citizens and local communities standing in the courts to defend the health and well being of living systems.
As the Cree Proverb states, “Only when the last tree has died, the last river been poisoned, and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.” [15]
[1] https://www.pearsonhighered.com/assets/samplechapter/0/2/0/5/0205835503.pdf
[2] https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/development-of-agriculture/
[3] http://www.indigenouspeople.net/
[4] https://www.fws.gov/nativeamerican/pdf/tek-salmon-2000.pdf
[5] https://www.dalailama.com/messages/environment/universal-responsibility
[6] https://iseethics.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/stone-christopher-d-should-trees-have-standing.pdf
[7] https://www.uwosh.edu/facstaff/barnhill/ES-243/pp%20outline%20Native%20American.pdf
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_jurisprudence
[9] Wild Law, page 97
[10] http://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/new-zealand-bill-establishing-river-as-having-own-legal-personality-passed/
[11] https://intercontinentalcry.org/rights-nature-indigenous-philosophies-reframing-law/
[12] https://news.mongabay.com/2017/05/colombias-constitutional-court-grants-rights-to-the-atrato-river-and-orders-the-government-to-clean-up-its-waters/
[13] https://celebratewcffg.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/rights-of-nature-for-wcffg.pdf
[14] https://intercontinentalcry.org/rights-nature-indigenous-philosophies-reframing-law/
[15] https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/news/for-earth-day-quotable-native-wisdom-about-the-environment/